Brown Arms, White WarsGiving credit to the often-overlooked soldiers of two World Wars

Opinion Editorial

Over 1,300,000 soldiers of Indian ancestry fought in the First World War. It remains the largest volunteer army ever assembled in the history of the world. It was the largest number of soldiers fighting from the British Empire after those from the British Isles. Not Canada, not Australia, no other part of the Empire contributed as many troops.

Two and half million Indian soldiers fought in the Second World War. You might want to read those sentences again.

If this group of soldiers came from anywhere in the Western world and if they were white, there'd be monuments to them in every major Western capital in the world.

If you want to, you can find fragments in speeches from the First World War era made by British MPs in the House of Commons saying that without the Indian Army, the very result of the war may have been different. That's quite an admission.

But most of us don't know about any of that. Instead we believe what we're led to believe: that these wars were fought by Europeans or their descendants in North America, Australia or New Zealand, arrayed against the forces of blank—insert the word of your choice—across our world. If any soldiers from the colonies or dominions get featured in those narratives, they're from those same places. Considering the origins of Kipling's poem you could call it "the white man's burden revisited". Accordingly, we all, even those of us of third world ancestry, owe our freedom and the very existence of Western democracies to the European men and women who fought in the world wars.

In the last few years, although some efforts may be a little clumsy—the Black Poppies exhibit at the Imperial War Museum in London for instance—mainstream cultural institutions are starting to acknowledge that there's a problem here. Amazingly, some are even trying to do something about it. Whether it's because there are hundreds and thousands of British citizens, born and raised, who happen to be of Asian ancestry may have something to do with it. No matter. These are changes that enrich us all. Don't we want to know about all those who fought for our freedom?

At times, I continue to be staggered by just how deep our misconceptions really go. One need go no further than the website for the British National Army Museum, for instance, where we are told in the section about Black and Asian contributions the following—and I quote—"In the First World War, troops from over 20 countries in the Empire served alongside British troops and more soldiers from the Indian Army fought in the Gallipoli Peninsula than did ANZAC troops." Did you know that?

Did you know that the last undercover wireless operator in occupied France during the Second World War was a Muslim woman, Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan? Undercover agent, multi-linguist, pianist, writer of children's stories, Khan once shot her way out of a German ambush. The second time she was captured, she was interrogated. They got nothing out of her. Finally, she was sent to Dachau and shot. She was 30 years old.

But in a post-9/11 world despite a widespread growing interest in military history in the West, how likely is it that these stories will be told, unearthed from British and other archives? It certainly would not be politically correct. After all, we're talking about men and women with brown arms, with last names like "Khan," "Singh," and "Ram." Many wore beards, turbans, spoke in Indian tongues, practicing and maintaining their religions—Sikhism, Hinduism—and dare one say it in 2004, Islam. They fought on land, in the air and by sea.

In today's world, people with such names and of such appearance tend to make headlines only in association with terrorism or religious fundamentalism, not because they've fought for freedom—our freedom—through acts as horrific, bloody, necessary and glorious as anyone else's.

Perhaps this is simply about imperial dredges still clogging the drains, bits of leftover racism conveniently masking the truth. Perhaps the real reason these stories continue to be marginalized is that their unearthing would expose British imperialist designs and actions in India as they never have been before.

In his coverage of Iraq, journalist Robert Fisk, in describing the Indian Army cemetery in Basra, said it was the "shame of the British Empire" for which these soldiers died—that in the case of First World War Indian casualties buried in that cemetery, not a single name was even recorded by the British.

And yet the British called India the jewel in its crown, for India was the largest, most important colony in the Empire, a gargantuan source of loot (an Indian word), revenue, and raw material. Used to fight the empire's wars almost everywhere except Europe, Indian soldiers were absolutely part of that formulation.

But always Europe was a "no-go zone." Using brown men to fight white men was unthinkable, and so Indian soldiers were always side-lined.

Necessity made the British finally dispense with the policy in the First World War. Indeed in the seminal book, Sepoys in the Trenches: The Indian Corps on the Western Front 1914-15, Sandhurst Military Academy graduate and historian Gordon Corrigan traces just how critical Indian forces were when just days after war was declared, Indian troops were dispatched to the Western Front. No one else was ready.

Since the wars ended, the effects of popular culture and the media have played with our perceptions of these wars. Aside from generally sidelining remembrance unless it's the first couple of weeks of November, we do get fed a steady diet of newspaper stories, films, books, plays that for the most part feature white men on the front lines. Changing those perceptions to include the narratives of Indian soldiers is not about some ridiculous notion of political correctness, it's about dealing with reality.

What does it say about our culture, about our time, that we cannot collectively acknowledge in our ceremonies and monuments the debt we owe these men and women? What kind of democracies do not pay tribute to those who paid the ultimate price for their creation and perpetuation? Are we doomed to remember only those who fit the image of those we'd like to believe fought for our freedom?

If so, what kind of people does that make us? How democratic? And ultimately, in our own minds, how free?

— Molly Amoli K. Shinhat is an independent journalist based in Ottawa. Before coming to Canada, her family lived in India, Iraq and Britain.

Published in Embassy, November 10, 2004

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